The Iranian authorities criticised the country’s state television on Wednesday for airing a program about ongoing oil sales to China in violation of US sanctions, claiming that the report went “against national interests”.

The Tuesday episode of the “Hello, Good Morning” talk show featured a segment on Iranian-flagged tanker, the Salina, which reportedly transported 1 million barrels of crude oil to China’s Jinzhou port in late June.

Over the past 30 years, America has been involved in several conflicts in the Middle East and the last thing that anyone needs is for the US and Iran to be at war, which is why it’s good that Donald Trump decided not to launch a military strike in Iran in retaliation for shooting down a US drone.

On Tuesday, June 25, Iran’s police arrested an Iranian citizen, who immolated himself at the entrance of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

According to the ICT Ministry, the victim was identified as a private contractor in a branch of the ministry, and he committed self-immolation for not receiving his demands after entering the main door of the ministry's headquarters.

On Tuesday, July 2, in a state order, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, changed the commander of the Basij Militia and the deputy chief of staff of the armed forces. Khamenei appointed Mohammad Reza Ashtiani as the deputy chief of staff of the armed forces, replacing Ataollah Salehi; and Gholamreza Soleimani as the commander of Basij Militia, replacing Gholam Hossein Gheybparvar.

At the beginning of the week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to social media to criticise the United States. In a message on Twitter, the Iranian Foreign Minister said that it is in the United States’ interests, and those of the rest of the world, to remove its forces from the Persian Gulf. He added: “But it's now clear that the #B Team is not concerned with US interests—they despise diplomacy, and thirst for war.”

The Saudi oil minister called on the international community on Tuesday to take action against Iran’s threats to global energy security.

Khalid Al Falih told CNN that Saudi Arabia has enough spare capacity when it comes to oil to offset US sanctions, but that the big risk will come from any conflict in the Middle East, citing recent attacks on oil tankers and pipelines that Saudi Arabia has blamed on Iran and drone attacks on the Kingdom by Iran-backed militias.

The Trump administration is working to persuade allies that the ongoing tensions in the Middle East are a global challenge that requires global diplomacy, according to the new acting US defence chief Mark Esper on Tuesday, and “not [just] Iran versus the United States”.

Esper, who is meeting with NATO defence ministers in Brussels, told reporters that he wants to help create a broader coalition to deter Iran’s malign behaviour and compel Iranian officials to come back to the negotiating table for a new nuclear deal.

A spokesman for Iran’s Judiciary has outright rejected that there are political prisoners in Iran, despite a wealth of information proving that the contrary is true.

Political prisoners in Iran have been mistreated for decades. They are often locked up for long periods of time, sometimes in solitary confinement and sometimes in the same wards as violent criminals. They are routinely denied the most basic of rights – rights that should be guaranteed under international law.

The world’s anti-money laundering and terror-financing body reimposed a restriction on Iran on Friday for failing to comply with financial transparency efforts, despite being given multiple opportunities.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) called on all members and their jurisdictions to require increased “supervisory examination” of Iran-based branches and subsidiaries of their banks. This restriction had been suspended for three years.

FATF was responding to what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told their meeting in Orlando, Florida, was Iran’s “willful failure to address its systemic money laundering and terrorist financing deficiencies”.

On Saturday, June 29, the compound of the Iranian opposition People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or Mujahedin-e Khalq, MEK) in Albania, called Ashraf 3, welcomed an international delegation that supported the democratic alternative to Iran’s clerical rule, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

Participants, including parliamentarians, jurists, and civil society figures from all over Europe and Australia, participated in a conference called "The mullahs’ regime, a source of war and instability in the region; the Iranian Resistance, messenger of peace and freedom", where they discussed the belligerence and terrorism of the mullahs.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that he would “seriously” consider any request from the US regarding military action in Iran “on its merits”, but stressed that no request has so far been made.

However, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has asked Australia to take part in a new “global coalition” against Iran to help protect key shipping lanes in the Gulf after several acts of aggression by Iran, including multiple tanker attacks and the downing of a US drone.

The US military’s cyber forces launched a digital strike against Iran’s military computer systems on Thursday, at roughly the same time that Donald Trump cancelled a conventional military strike in retaliation for Iran’s takedown of a US surveillance drone.

Two US officials said that the cyber strikes were approved by Trump, while a third provided the outlines. The trio spoke anonymously because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the action.

In the coming days, the US will impose sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, according to an announcement made by US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin this week.

This speech on Monday coincides with the US’s leveraging of sanctions against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and eight senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These sanctions target individuals that the US says are responsible for Iran’s malign behaviours, including several attacks on oil tankers and the downing of a US drone.

Over the weekend, US Vice President Mike Pence appeared on CBS’s "Face the Nation" to talk about the threat posed by the Iranian government and the Free Iran rally that took place in Washington DC on Friday.

Journalist Margaret Brennan asked Pence if the US had conducted cyber operations against Iran in response for shooting down a US drone last week, but Pence declined to comment as it was a covert operation.

The US’s Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper called on European allies on Thursday to publically condemn Iran’s actions and to join the US-proposed maritime security effort to protect the Strait of Hormuz, following several attacks in the key shipping lane that the US blames on Iran.

Mojtaba Zolnoor, a Member of the Iranian Parliament from the city of Qom and a hardliner figure close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), was appointed as the president of Parliament’s National Security Commission.

Zolnoor had previously served as the Supreme Leader’s deputy representative in the IRGC. He was behind the crackdown on protesters in 2009, following popular uprisings that erupted in objection to the rigged results of the presidential elections.

The United States has called on the UN Security Council to take a series of measures to ensure that its sanctions blacklist is enforced as thoroughly and as tightly as possible.

In the letter to the UN Security Council, the United States pointed out that the sanctions blacklist had not been updated for quite some time, meaning that the effect is not as enforced as it could, or should, be. For more than nine years, aliases and other such relevant information have not been included on the list that is distributed to all UN member states.

Iran is intolerant, warmongering, fundamentalist, paranoid, corrupt, suppressive, and violent. It is made up of only the worst kind of people; those who do not respect the rights of others, who would do anything for power, who believe that their lives matter more than those of the millions they hurt on a daily basis.